6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
There is no shortage of raw leadership talent just faulty thinking about how to access and develop it., December 15, 2007
This review is from: Leaders at All Levels: Deepening Your Talent Pool to Solve the Succession Crisis (J-B US non-Franchise Leadership) (Hardcover)
Ram Charan's "Leaders At All Levels" takes on a major crisis that exists today in most large US corporations - the shortage of leadership talent. Companies while focused on the next quarters' earnings target have ignored the hard work of building future company leaders. In a recent poll of 1380 Human Resource (HR) directors of large US companies, sixty percent said their firms have no CEO succession plan in place.
The top jobs are harder now than in the past due to hyper-competition, changing technology, and a raft of emerging players from every corner of the globe pressuring companies to keep changing their game to survive and thrive. And the evidence shows that a lot of firms are not responding to it well. Why? Charan argues the state of leadership development is faulty and companies must abandon traditional leadership practices. The severe shortage of leaders is an unmistakable sign that the typical approaches to leadership are fundamentally flawed. We urgently need to get at the root causes, faulty conventional wisdom about what leadership is and how to develop it.
"Leaders At All Levels" lays out a radically new leadership-development model, "The Apprenticeship Model," which transforms leadership development from a discrete activity run by the human resources staff to an everyday process that is fully integrated into the fabric of the business and in which line leaders play a central role. The model centers on customizing and accelerating a potential leader's development and growth path.
"It is designed to give each promising leader the opportunities that are right for him/her at the fastest pace of growth he/she can handle, defining the learning in each new job and making sure the learning in fact took place before helping the leader take the next step or leap forward." It allows leaders to develop increasingly "sophisticated and nuanced versions of their core capabilities in an astonishing short time."
While Charan points out that the model is not for the faint-hearted, it does work. He validates this approach with real-world examples of its success at General Electric (GE), Colgate-Palmolive, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Textron, and WellPoint, Inc.
The book is organized into sections including: how to recognize leadership potential (including GE's leadership criteria); how to develop a leader; how "Apprenticeship" turns potential into leaders; leadership growth through concentric learning; freedom to fail; how to manage "Apprenticeship" systemically: and choosing the CEO. It also includes tools for: rating a company's ability to develop leaders at the highest level; spotting a leader; what makes a good boss-mentor: and what to coach on.
"Leaders At All Levels" is a must read for CEOs and Boards of Directors concerned with CEO succession and leadership development. The book will also appeal to anyone who aspires to a leadership role, particularly those who feel trapped in a faulty development process. For this last group, the last chapter, "What can a leader do?" will more than justify the cost of the book.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Re-spin of The Leadership Pipeline, May 30, 2009
This review is from: Leaders at All Levels: Deepening Your Talent Pool to Solve the Succession Crisis (J-B US non-Franchise Leadership) (Hardcover)
If you have read the Leadership Pipeline (co-authored by the same guy) then you have seen most of the thoughts expressed here. It is focused on the top end of the management chain and the failure of many corporations to adequately foster the growth and development of leaders from within the company. Other than that it is a good book with noble and respectable intensions. This is not a good "how to" manual, more of a conceptual description of the kinds of poor leadership issues that impact most large companies. I would have liked to have seen a better description of the root causes of poor leadership thinking with some pointed examples of how this can be fixed and an explanation of why the fixes work. For example I as a manager have conceived and implemented the best plan or solution vs. I put the challange to my team to develop the best plan or solution and then partnered with them to achieve a superior result, etc. If you are looking at ways to cultivate new CEOs within your complany this book will make more sense than if you are looking at moving your company toward a great leadership culture by teaching new leaders the meaning and value of leadership skills.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A pragmatic approach to leadership development throughout any enterprise, January 15, 2008
This review is from: Leaders at All Levels: Deepening Your Talent Pool to Solve the Succession Crisis (J-B US non-Franchise Leadership) (Hardcover)
Now more than ever before, organizations need leadership at all levels and within all areas of their enterprise. The "succession crisis" to which the subtitle of this book refers includes but is by no means limited to C-level executives. With all due respect to formal education and institutional training programs, on-the-job training is (by far) the best preparation for completing more demanding tasks, assuming increased responsibilities and duties, etc. Moreover, Ram Charan is absolutely correct when asserting that organizations "are short on the quantity and quality of leaders they need...[We must] abandon our traditional leadership development practices. They're not working. Tinkering and fine-tuning won't solve the fundamental program. It's time for a completely new approach to finding and developing the kinds of leaders businesses need... To fix the problem, you have to get to its root, which is the faulty conventional wisdom about what leadership is and how to improve it."
Charan offers what he characterizes as a "radically different approach," one "that is not for the fainthearted": the Apprenticeship Model. (What it involves and how to implement it are best revealed within Charan's narrative rather than discussed now, out of context.) Any model is based on certain assumptions and Charan's is no exception. By now, he has concluded that not everyone can become a leader, that leadership ability is developed through practice and self-correction, and that the CEO job requires "giant leaps in learning." The Apprenticeship Model is based on these assumptions. As in all of his previous books, Charan is again a pragmatist when presenting his insights and recommendations in this book and thus almost wholly preoccupied with explaining what works, what doesn't, and how to achieve the desired results. For example:
Chapter 1: How to measure the "leadership talent deficit" in an organization and then fund efforts to reduce (if not eliminate) it
Note: This has serious implications for both hiring and subsequent training.
Chapter 2: How apprenticeship develops effective leaders
Chapter 3: How to recognize leadership potential
Note: My personal opinion is that the material in Chapter 3 should precede the material in Chapter 2.
Chapter 4: How to customize each leader's growth path
Chapter 5: What the crucial role of "bosses" is
Note: Personally, I dislike the term "boss" but agree with Charan that one standard of measurement for a supervisor's performance evaluation should be the extent to which that supervisor developed skills in those for whom she or his is directly responsible.
Chapter 6: How to manage apprenticeship initiatives and relationships systematically
Chapter 7: How to select the CEO candidate who is most likely to provide the leadership and produce the results that are needed
Chapter 8: How to institutionalize the Apprenticeship Model
Once again, I am in total agreement with Charan's assertion that leadership must be development at all levels and in all areas of the given enterprise. The Apprenticeship Model is uniquely, indeed ideally suited to help achieve that objective because it is based on a sometimes misunderstood or neglected business reality: those who function as mentors (i.e. "masters") to their direct reports learn much of value while doing so; moreover, their direct reports, in turn, can and should serve as mentors to those for whom they are responsible. This interactive process is precisely what Thomas Davenport, Carla O'Dell, Peter Senge, and others mean when advocating a "total learning organization."
In the Epilogue, Charan observes that individual leaders can and should embrace the Apprenticeship Model even if their companies don't and take ownership of their own development. Those who believe they have leadership potential that is undiscovered should take charge of their own learning and development. They should make their own luck." Quite right.
Two final points. First, the model that Ram Charan recommends does not replace an organization's formal training programs. On the contrary, both should be mutually supportive and carefully coordinated combinations of earning opportunities. Also, what Charan recommends can be implemented in any organization, whatever its size or nature may be.
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